Amelia Hruby: 00:03

Welcome to the softer cast, a podcast for small business owners and creatives who want tender podcast advice without any tech bro bullshit. I'm Amelia Hruby, and I'm the founder of softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for women and non binary entrepreneurs. On this show, I answer your questions about podcasting. Things like, should I put my show on YouTube? Can I just record it on Zoom?

Amelia Hruby: 00:26

How much do editors really cost? And how many downloads should my podcast be getting? Yeah, I'll even answer that question. Every episode of the softer cast is really practical, a little magical, and less than 10 minutes long. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show and share it with your podcast bestie.

Amelia Hruby: 00:47

Then head to the show notes to check out our free resources. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Join us on the softer side of podcasting. Hello, and welcome back to the softer cast. I'm Amelia Hruby.

Amelia Hruby: 01:06

I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio. And on this show, I answer your questions about podcasting with my always tender, gently technical approach. If you're not familiar with Softer Sounds, I'd love for you to know that we are an editing and production studio that supports women and non binary small business owners. We create shows of all kinds, but particularly ones that are in the wellness, spirituality, business, entrepreneurship, and arts and culture spaces. We work with an amazing roster of creative people, and I would love to add you to it.

Amelia Hruby: 01:48

So you can head to our website at softer sounds dot studio to learn more about our production offerings as well as our courses on launching your own podcast or a DIY podcast promotion and monetization. I also offer 1 on 1 advising. So you'll find all of that at softer sounds dot studio. And now that I've told you where you can get the good goods, let's dive into today's episode where I have a question from a wonderful listener. Thanks so much to Shirell for reaching out with this question, and let me read it for you.

Amelia Hruby: 02:23

Charelle says, hi, Amelia. I'm in the process of launching my second podcast and I've made a list of people I'd like to have on the show. Now I'm struggling with what would be the best way to pitch this new podcast to them and make it interesting enough for them to make time to be interviewed. How might I do that? So thank you, Charelle, for this question.

Amelia Hruby: 02:43

It's a really good one. I feel like I see a lot of people talk about how to pitch yourself to be a guest on podcasts and far fewer people talk about how to get guests on your podcast. And the processes are similar, but not the same. So let's dive into it. When you're pitching a guest, I think the most important thing to foreground is your personality and the care that you take with your show.

Amelia Hruby: 03:10

So I think that kind of the worst things that a pitch can be are boring or inconsiderate. You don't want your pitch to sound like your show could be literally any podcast out there, and you don't want to pitch in such a way that the person you're inviting on feels like you already feel entitled to their time, or you already need so much from them that they can't imagine saying yes to this pitch. So I think from the very first moment you think about pitching, we're really focused on genuinely sharing, like, who you are and what your show is about as well as being as considerate and full of care as you can in your guest booking process. So the first point of access for pitching a guest is likely going to be an email that you send them. If you are really on social media, you might start out in a DM or even a comment, but I highly recommend just going to email or using the contact form on someone's website.

Amelia Hruby: 04:13

When you're doing that, I recommend starting with a subject line that very clearly has interview request in it. Now you might say interview request and then the name of your show. You might have a catchier pitch that's going to speak to the topic of the conversation, but I think the clarity of interview request or podcast invitation is great to put in the subject line. Then we get to the text of your pitch email. I recommend starting out, of course, by saying hello and then introducing yourself and your show.

Amelia Hruby: 04:43

I think keep that pretty brief and link to your show in the beginning. Now if you have a brand new show, like Shirell was sharing, then I recommend having a link to either a media kit or to you know, it could be as simple as a Google Doc or a Notion page that has information about the show. So even if the show is not live yet, you can have the title, description, some episodes that you're planning on making, more about you, the host, and maybe even some of the branding there already. And so that'll help people get a sense of what this show is even if you don't have episodes live yet. So that's our first paragraph of the pitch, who you are, what the show is, linking to the show or to a page about what the show will be, also perhaps looking to your own personal website, all of that right at the beginning.

Amelia Hruby: 05:29

Then I think you tell them what you wanna talk to them about. So my standard pitch says I'm reaching out because I'd love to feature you on the podcast to talk about, insert blank here. So I typically try to provide a few things that you'd like to talk about. You can also give a broad topic and then some bullet points. You wanna show that you know what this person shares and says in their work, but also try to provide something interesting, like a hook.

Amelia Hruby: 05:54

Like, what's something that is a little different maybe than, like, the same three bullet points they might be sharing all the time? Can you show that you have that familiarity with their work and you want to go one step deeper together? I think that's what makes for a really strong guest invitation pitch. From there, I like to provide a little more context about my show. So this is where I might include the show description in the text of the email, and, typically, I will link to a few highlighted episodes.

Amelia Hruby: 06:23

Now, again, if you don't have episodes yet, you can't do this. But if you do have a back catalog, show it off a bit. This is a great place for them to know, like, oh, you had this person and that person on your show. Of course, I want to be on it. Those are things we wanna be highlighting in a strong pitch as well.

Amelia Hruby: 06:41

And then, finally, you close out the pitch email by letting them know what those next steps are. So, typically, I will say, if you're interested, I would love to x y z. That could be a couple different things. You could say, if you're interested, please reply to this email with a yes, and I will send the details for scheduling an interview. Or if you're interested, I would love to schedule a time to record an interview.

Amelia Hruby: 07:06

Here's my booking link if you want to go ahead and book. So you could go ahead and include that. You could have an intermediary step before you send the link. And I think it's also nice there if you're going to send a booking link just to let them know our conversation will only take about an hour of your time, etcetera. So something just kind of giving them a sense of what are you expecting from this interaction.

Amelia Hruby: 07:28

And then there, you just sign off. Thanks so much for reading this. Hope to hear from you. Cheers, your name, whatever it might be. So that's how I construct a pitch email to invite a guest onto your show.

Amelia Hruby: 07:39

That's typically going to be your first point of contact. Now, again, if you're pitching in like a DM, it's gonna need to be way shorter, which is why I don't like to do it that way. I prefer to have the space of an email to share all of that context for who I am, what I wanna talk about on the show, what we've done in the past, and more. Now once you send the pitch, you might hear back or you might not. I recommend following up at least once, potentially twice, if you do not hear back.

Amelia Hruby: 08:08

Sometimes emails just get lost in the inbox, and we need to follow-up to kind of unbury them there. I think you should wait at minimum 1 week before following up. Often, I will wait more like 10 to 14 days, and then I'll follow-up the 1st time, and then I'll wait that long again and follow-up a second time if I really want to book this guest. And when you do follow-up, I would reply to your initial email. I would be courteous, and I would send, like, a brief follow-up, something like, I just wanted to see if you I wanted to reach back out to invite you to be a guest again.

Amelia Hruby: 08:39

You can see more of the details in my previous email. I hope that we might be able to find a time to chat soon. Or if now is not a good time, please let me know when I might reach back out in the future, and we can circle back to this in a week or a month or a season or whatever you wanna say there. So we've got the pitch, and we've got the follow ups. Now this question is really about, like, how do I make it interesting for them?

Amelia Hruby: 09:02

How do I make them want to make time? And, again, I think that the best ways to do that are going to be to let your personality shine and just to make sure your pitch is full of care. So really be personalizing the materials that you're sending about yourself and your show. Really be personalizing the pitch that you're sending to show that you know what this person does, and you have great questions to ask them or topics to talk about. You could also share a little bit about how you're gonna promote the episode.

Amelia Hruby: 09:34

Tell them how this will benefit them to take the time to be on your show. And I would say, you know, you don't want it to sound super transactional, not like, if you come on my show, I will give you 3 graphics and 2 reviews and blah, blah, blah. Like, I don't know that I would be that specific because it can feel transactional. But at the same time, this is a person you don't know. There is some sort of transaction of time occurring.

Amelia Hruby: 09:57

So you could say something like, we promote every episode to our newsletter list of this many people if you have a lot of people or of a few 100 people if you don't have so many, or just don't include the number if you have, you know, none, that's fine. But, you know, we promote every episode to our Instagram account. We put every episode on YouTube. We create transcripts of every episode and customized video grams for all of our guests so that you can easily promote this and share your work, things like that that are gonna show them that you're putting in the work as well. Like, if they're giving you an hour, you are also providing all of these materials for them.

Amelia Hruby: 10:34

So that's just a few ideas on how to send a pitch that feels personal and personalized and how to pitch people to be on your show even if it isn't live yet. So I hope that that helps. I hope that this inspires you to new heights of sending pitches out there and getting great guests for your show. And if this also has you thinking about how you can get your show in front of more listeners, our mini course DIY podcast marketing and monetization has a lot of ideas for growing your audience and getting your show in more people's ears. And it doesn't include anything specific about guesting, but it might be a great resource as well.

Amelia Hruby: 11:17

For now, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the softer cast. Thanks again to Charelle for the question. If you have a question of your own, you can send it to me via email or a voice message through SpeakPipe. Both of those are linked in the show notes. You can find them there, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Amelia Hruby: 11:40

Thanks so much for listening to the softer cast. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your podcast bestie. And after you do that, go ahead and drop us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you'd like to submit a question, head to speakpipe.com/softercast to record a message, or email us at hi atsofter sounds studio. And last but not least, we made some awesome free things for you.

Amelia Hruby: 12:05

Head to the show notes to download our free podcast launch toolkit or our 3 step podcast audit. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Thanks again for tuning in and joining us on the softer side of podcasting.